The Autumn Session’s calendar leaves the Assembly barely five working days in which to examine the accumulated grievances of an entire Union Territory. The House deserves more time, and the government would do well to grant it.
The Autumn Session of the Jammu and Kashmir Legislative Assembly, convening from September 21 to September 30, has been allotted seven sitting days. Once the opening formalities are set aside and a day is kept for business if any, members are left with roughly five working days. For a House that carries the expectations of a Union Territory returning to representative government after years of central rule, that is a slender allowance.
The concerns awaiting the House are neither few nor small. Unemployment among the educated young, the condition of roads, water supply and power distribution ahead of another winter, the pace of recruitment, the state of public health institutions and the many unsettled questions of the post Article 370 transition all require examination on the floor. Each of these subjects, taken on its own, could occupy a full day of debate. Compressed together into five, they can only be touched upon.
Legislative accountability is not a matter of ceremony. It is exercised through Question Hour, through calling attention motions, through adjournment motions and through unhurried discussion on the reports and demands placed before the House. These instruments need time to work. When the calendar is tight, replies grow shorter, supplementaries are cut off, and members representing distant constituencies return home with questions unanswered. The Leader of the Opposition, Sunil Sharma, has raised this objection, and it deserves a considered response rather than a procedural one.
The government has pointed out that the session satisfies the constitutional requirement on intervals between sittings, and that some other legislatures sit for shorter periods. Both statements may be correct, and neither is sufficient. A constitutional minimum is a floor, not a standard to aspire to, and comparison with the least active assemblies in the country is a poor argument in a Union Territory where the restoration of the legislature was itself presented as a democratic achievement. The test is not whether the House met, but whether it was given the time to do its work.
The remedy is straightforward and entirely within the government’s hands. The session can be extended, the calendar can be rearranged, and additional sittings can be notified before the House assembles. The Opposition has asked for a longer session, and the demand is a reasonable one. Nothing in the rules prevents the Business Advisory Committee from meeting and recommending a revised schedule.
An Assembly is judged by the seriousness with which it is allowed to function. Extending these sittings would cost the government little and would reassure the public that scrutiny is welcomed rather than managed. Seven days are too few. The government should reconsider, and it should do so before September 21.
